Express Checkout with the Payflow Gateway

Overview

The PayPal Express Checkout button gives your buyers another way to pay, and it complements your existing Payflow payment solution.

Online shoppers appreciate the convenience and security of PayPal, where they can pay with their PayPal balance, bank account or credit card without sharing or entering any information on the merchant’s site.

To use this service, merchants must have a merchant/business account with PayPal.

PayPal also provides a Sandbox test environment to test your integration end to end.

User experience

The new enhanced Express Checkout with In-context flow provides a simplified checkout experience that replaces the classic Express Checkout full page redirect flow.

On desktops, the PayPal payment flow takes place in a secure window that opens in front of the merchant website, while on small-screen devices (tablets and smartphones) the PayPal payment screens are optimized for full-page mode.
Express Checkout with In-context flow offers a streamlined checkout flow that keeps customers local to your website throughout the payment authorization process. With this flow, customers are not redirected away from your website. Instead, the redesigned checkout experience presents PayPal screens in a secure window that sits atop your website page. This leads to a more natural and user-friendly checkout experience.

The Checkout flow

The following breaks down the checkout steps in the previous figure:

The buyer chooses to checkout with PayPal and clicks on the button.

On the click of the button, the in-context JavaScript triggers open the pop-up window and waits for your form submit to complete the SetExpressCheckout API request to PayPal. PayPal responds with a token, an alphanumeric identifier in the format EC-123456789. The token indicates that the checkout process was initiated successfully.

You now redirect the buyer to the PayPal URL with the token appended at the end. If you have implemented the in-context JavaScript correctly this redirect will be managed within the pop-up window.

The buyer logs in to PayPal in a secure window that overlays’ your website.

The buyer also authorizes the payment in the secure window.

PayPal returns the buyer to your website to review the charges and transaction details on your confirmation page. You can make a GetExpressCheckoutDetails API call to get the details you display on this confirmation page.

The confirmation page should have a confirm payment button that triggers the DoExpressCheckoutPayment API call. The transaction is now completed.